


In The Quiet Universe

by windfalling



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 04:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfalling/pseuds/windfalling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything about this — about her — is a revelation. Doctor!Amy/Rose AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Quiet Universe

**Author's Note:**

> for laura. happy birthday!

She isn’t sure whether or not to believe it, or if she _can_ believe it. But her eyes are telling her that there is a big blue police box sitting in her living room, and her fingers confirm its existence shortly after.

The door suddenly swings open and Rose snaps her arm back, retreating several steps and brandishing a baseball bat. Rose doesn’t know what to expect, but a ginger-haired woman twirling a metal device in her fingers isn’t it.

“Is that how you greet all your guests?” the woman says disapprovingly, stepping out.

“Who are you?”

The device whirs to life and makes some strange noise as she turns, waving it around in a seemingly random manner. Rose flinches away.

“Oh, relax, it isn’t a weapon,” the woman assures her, but Rose isn’t convinced. She abruptly pivots and walks towards Rose—towards the kitchen, actually—but the woman pauses when she reaches her, appraising Rose’s outfit with a critical eye.

“I once went through a scarf phase,” she says contemplatively, reaching out to Rose and curling the edge of Rose’s scarf around her finger. Her other hand pushes the bat down gently, meeting little resistance. “And a man I met tried to convince me to wear bowties. They looked ridiculous on him, if you ask me.”

“Look here—” Rose tries, but the woman walks right past her feeble protests and goes straight to the refrigerator, grabbing an apple and plopping herself down on the couch.

Rose snatches the apple from her hands, ignoring her outcry. “If you’re going to eat my food and lounge around my flat, I think I at least deserve to know who you are.”

“I’m the doctor,” the woman says impatiently, looking at Rose as if the answer should be obvious, “and I received a distress signal from this location.”

“A distress signal? So, what, you mean like someone dialed 112?”

“Not that kind of doctor,” the woman crosses one leg over the other and clasps her hands on her knee, “I’m _the_ Doctor.”

 

 

Rose leaps over the widening crack in the ground, reaching for the Doctor’s outstretched hand. All the breath seems to push out of her lungs as her left foot slips at the edge, arms flailing as she teeters backward, but the Doctor lunges and pulls her to safety. Rose stumbles, gasping, onto stable ground, with her heart racing hard enough to feel as if it were trying to break out of her skin.

They stand still, the Doctor’s hands still gripping Rose’s elbows. Despite herself, Rose finds a smile stretching her lips, exhilaration flushing her cheeks. After a moment, the Doctor laughs.

“That was—incredible,” Rose says.

The Doctor beams at the look on her face. "If you thought  _that_ was exciting, well, you've got a lot to see."

“But what was all that, anyway? What just happened?”

The Doctor offhandedly launches into a scientific explanation far beyond Rose’s knowledge and the current scientific advancement of her time; she understands perhaps a tenth of what the Doctor is saying, but her fascination and wonder eclipses everything else.

At the end of the day, when the world is healed and the universe is steady, the Doctor holds open the door of the TARDIS, offering her all of time and space. Rose hesitated the first time.

She steps inside.

 

 

Space, in all its glory, fills her with wide-eyed wonder. The stars burn brightly, it seems, just for her. In the distance, the earth spins slowly, and when she holds up the palm of her hand under the image of the planet, she feels impossibly small.

Behind her, the Doctor stands close enough to touch. Rose catches her hand without turning back. Rose does not say anything, but the Doctor understands: in this quiet universe, it is easy to feel lonely, even when you are not alone.

 

 

The Doctor always looks at her as if she’s going to leave. Rose will find her staring a moment too long, hear her voice too cheerful or too subdued, feel her try to distance herself from Rose at the same time she holds her hand and tries not to let go. Rose wonders, as she sometimes does, about the ones that came before, if they ever wanted to leave. She cannot imagine it.

There is one thing she has in common with the Doctor, at least: Rose can’t settle. Not after this. She cannot—will not—go back to an uncertain life filled with lingering discontent. There are some things she does miss, of course, and some _people_ , but it is a sacrifice she made peace with long ago. Rose chooses to be here, going on adventures with her Doctor, wandering into places that stretch the reaches of her imagination. This is something Rose will never tire of; everything about this—about her—is a revelation.

 

 

It isn’t until a quiet night in the TARDIS with the Doctor’s fingers running through Rose’s hair that she finally asks, “Do you ever miss it?”

“Miss what?” Rose turns to face her. The Doctor is closer to her than she initially thought and Rose’s cheeks flush as she pulls back.

“Home,” the Doctor says, “your friends, your mother.”

“Are you tired of me already?” Rose asks teasingly, but the Doctor simply stares intently at her.

“Of course not,” she says, looking off to the side and exhales something resembling a laugh. “Never.”

The Doctor tilts her head down and presses her lips to Rose’s forehead, a learned habit from a man she met long ago. Rose moves closer and the hand in her hair goes around her back to rest at her waist.

“I’m staying,” Rose says quietly, tipping up her head to look at her. “I’m going to travel with you forever.”

The arm slung around her waist tightens momentarily in reaction before it relaxes in a conscious motion. The Doctor looks at her with sadness that runs bone-deep, centuries old. Rose doesn’t know if she will ever understand it, and chooses instead to push those thoughts away and run her fingers along the edge of the Doctor’s lips. She closes her eyes at the touch and it gives Rose all the courage she needs to kiss her. The Doctor’s freezes in surprise, fingers curling in Rose’s shirt; Rose almost loses her nerve at her lack of response and pulls away before the Doctor kisses her back, slow, but not unsure.

All the other lives she could have lived, the decisions she could have made, all the endless possibilities—none of it is worth it if it isn’t with her.

 

 

When Rose thinks of home, she thinks it is here: her, the Doctor and the TARDIS, traveling through time and space forever.


End file.
